HISD names interim chief academic officer

Outgoing HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced today he has apppointed Thelma Garza, superintendent of the east region, as interim chief academic officer. She will step in for Karen Garza (no relation), who is leaving for Lubbock ISD to become superintendent. Thelma Garza will begin her new job June 1, serving with her predecessor until she heads west.

The appointment comes at an interesting time — with the school board hunting for a new superintendent, who could want to bring in his or her own academic chief. Should Saavedra have bothered appointing an interim? Two trustees I spoke with this afternoon, Harvin Moore and Greg Meyers, answered yes.

Thelma Garza

“It’s important to have an interim so the organization knows who’s in charge for the time being,” Moore said, “but it’s also important to say interim means interim.” Moore emphasized that he wasn’t criticizing Thelma Garza — he praised her, in fact — but said a new superintendent would want to name his or her own permanent academic chief.

Meyers added that he wasn’t pleased about how Garza’s appointment came to be. He said Saavedra informed board members in an e-mail that Garza was his pick, end of story. Saavedra has that power, Meyers acknowledges, but said he wishes trustees had been given more of a say, being that Saavedra is on his way out.

“I think there needs to be a lot more collaboration with the board when you have a superintendent that’s leaving,” Meyers said. “I’m a little disappointed with the lack of collaboration.” Meyers added that he wasn’t necessarily disappointed with Saavedra’s pick — “Thelma Garza is very capable to take on this position,” he said — but thought Saavedra could have promoted someone from within central office, rather than creating a vacancy in the regional office. Saavedra has named Samuel Sarabia, who previously worked as executive principal of the east region, as the new east regional superintendent.

Thelma Garza, 61, has worked for HISD for 35 years. The headline on the district’s press release about her appointment certainly caught my attention: “From school bus driver to Chief Academic Officer of HISD.” Garza, of course, has not been a bus driver for the district in some three decades. She’s been a district superintendent (later renamed regional superintendent) since 1996. The headline also must have caught the attention of others, because the press office later sent an updated release that added the word “interim” before her title.

Thelma Garza’s salary as a regional superintendent is $160,820, and she earned the highest performance bonus of any of the regional superintendents this year: $24,999.98 (the maximum was $25,000). That means the schools in Garza’s district made the most growth last year, though some of the high schools in her area (Furr, Milby and Chavez, in particular) didn’t fare too well in the Children at Risk rankings this year.

I’ve asked the HISD press office if Garza will get a raise (Karen Garza’s salary is $199,593, with the same bonus potential), but haven’t heard back yet.

From HISD’s press release:

A native Houstonian, (Thelma) Garza attended HISD’s Eliot Elementary, McReynolds Middle School and graduated from Stephen F. Austin High School. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education and a Master of Education degree in administration and supervision from the University of Houston.

Garza was an English-as-a-second language (ESL) teacher at Eliot Elementary. She trained HISD ESL teachers and was a personnel coordinator for the district. From 1982-1995, she served as principal of Memorial, Lantrip and Gallegos Elementary Schools. She was promoted to district superintendent of the East District in 1996. Later, she became the regional superintendent and has served in that role ever since.

“In her 35 years serving HISD, Thelma Garza has achieved a remarkable record of success that’s inspiring to all. She’s a true leader, who is well respected by her peers, is active in the community, is focused on instruction and above all, who always puts children first,” said HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saaavedra. “Her experience and dedication will greatly benefit HISD, as interim Chief Academic Officer.”

Garza has achieved numerous awards, including the Association of Hispanic School Administrators Amigo Award, State of Texas Distinguished Education Leader, Texas Association of Hispanic Educators “Educator of the Year” and Central Office Administrator of the Year.

10 Responses

I don’t know Garza, but this part of the story strikes me as being ridiculous:

“Thelma Garza’s salary as a regional superintendent is $160,820, and she earned the highest performance bonus of any of the regional superintendents this year: $24,999.98 (the maximum was $25,000). That means the schools in Garza’s district made the most growth last year, though some of the high schools in her area (Furr, Milby and Chavez, in particular) didn’t fare too well in the Children at Risk rankings this year.”

HISD has way too many administrators and mid-level managers. Just how many superintendents (regional or not), executive principals, academic officers, literacy coaches, etc., does any school district really need?

And how in the world does an administrator, who likely has absolutely no (or, at best, very limited) contact with students, earn a bonus based on student test performance?

And, for that matter, what is the maximum bonus amount available to a teacher who, you know, actually teaches the students? Somehow, I doubt that it is $25K.

What do you mean by “academic officers” who are in middle management? I probably do not know what you are referring to there. But at least at my school the literacy coach is rooted right at the school, and she acts as a support person for teachers, plus she tutors kids who have a hard time reading every day for an hour after school.

We probably agree about the impossibility of creating a truly fair system of merit pay, but I was just saying today we need more grass-roots support people for teachers.

More and more, I have seen specialty public schools and private charters cream away the most talented students from the comprehensive middle and high schools, and they are leaving behind a large concentration of students with obvious, not hidden, special needs.

The district thinks up ways to try and stretch our resources–the teachers–to deal with students 1. who cannot speak any English, 2. who have obvious psychological problems not addressed in the community; 3. who don’t come to school very often and 4. who flat just give up but show up nonetheless.

For my high school, HISD has hired one attendance specialist for this year. I alone must have referred forty students to him so far this school year. And we have about one-hundred and fifty teachers, Before this year, it was nobody’s job to track down students who did not come to school. We had to write them off like you would a business loss, without knowing the reason. We need at least three attendance secialists.

If anything we need to employ our financial resources to provide students and teachers with more intervention personnel, certainly not to be located at the central or regional offices, but to respond quickly when students clearly exhibit self-defeating behaviors, before these become a habit.

The first thing that caught my eye was that old Abe is at it again. He did not consult with people, he just made his choice. This is why he is on the way out. Ms. Garza may be a wonderful choice but why not get some input? I hope she does a good job and he may be pushing her out there so she could be considered for the top job.

I also wished they had explained more about the “From school bus driver to Chief Academic Officer of HISD.” When did she drive the bus? and why? I think this could be very inspirational for other people in her position. Even though you don’t come from money, you can pull yourself up.

Given that Garza is a public employee, I think her salary does matter.

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JesseAlred:

I was not trying to make any connection between Garza’s bonus and her most recent appointment. Indeed, I don’t believe that there is any connection between the two. My comment was directed more at the fact that she received a bonus for student performance, and the amount of such bonus.

I agree with most of your second comment. By “mid-level managers” and “academic officers” (in middle management), I am generally referring to those positions on the organizational chart located between a school principal and the school district superintendent. I rather suspect that there is a tremendous amount of (intentional) organizational duplication in HISD; remove some, if not all, of that, and you suddenly have funds for your desired “attendance specialists.”

That being said, however, there is the question why any school district really needs an “attendance specialist” at all (my understanding is that certain governmental regulations are the reason why, but my underlying point remains the same).

As more and more “specialists” are hired/created/deemed to be needed/etc (along with middle-managers and so on), it seems to me that schools are becoming more and more about trying to keep up with big businesses and less and less about trying to actually teach any students.

I agree with you that school districts sometimes try to bring business values into places where they don’t belong–and that we don’t want to be top-heavy–but the point of having psychologists, social workers, ESL specialists and attendance specialists is to take non-teaching burdens off of teachers. If a kid has a problem, I would like to link him or her up to a person who can address the problem now, not allow wounds to fester. The latest education fad is linking bonuses to student test score performance, but we are not proactively seeking ways to support the teacher’s work. We have adopted a distrust-the-teacher approach, rather than acknowledging, hey, we have a very different set of issues in the urban schools.

Sixty-percent of kids in the district are Hispanic, and over eighty-percent are minoirity. But ethnicity is the main issue–it’s having down to earth experiences managed schools–and a regio–made up of kids from low to moderate income families.

Increasingly, charter schools draw off the most dedicated kids. Our schools cannot pick and choose–and should not, they are public schools.

So we need someone from here who is sensitive to the issues schools face. Not theories, not pie-in-the-sky, not fads, not ideologies, not what is happening in other cities, not politics, but kids with specific circumstances.

Plus, her regional district gave birth to East Early College, a public school whose initial success on TAKS scores recommends itself as a model to give the private charters like YES and KIPP a run for their money.

Alright, I think some of us should run for the school board. Some decisions should be left alone. The school district can not and should not host town hall meetings all around town every time it hires someone.

I hope DGS has attended the town hall meeting to voice their opinions on the next superintendent and I hope they voice their opinion on the next school board elections, that is where the really input is needed.